Our History

The History of Helping Hands Cambodia

Helping Hands was founded by Australian photographer Deborah Groves. As a tourist to Cambodia in 2004, Deborah was very moved by the poverty she came across in the rural village, Prasat Chas, where the organization is focused. From humble beginnings working with the community to offer emergency medical care and simple farm tools, Helping Hands grew to encompass a school and a holistic array of projects. Read about some of our past projects here.

Fortunately, donations always came through in time, as the bridge cost US$9000 in total. In keeping with Helping Hands’ philosophy of helping people to help themselves, local villagers were employed as labourers on the bridge.

In the years from 2006 to 2013, Helping Hands expanded its work in Cambodia, employing more staff and developing more programmes to give the local people a hand.

These programmes included a breakfast programme, a health and hygiene programme and the supply of uniforms at the school, various medical programmes, agriculture training, infrastructure improvement through building bridges and roads, community income generation, sanitation education and toilet construction.

From small beginnings in 2005, Deborah Groves and her dedicated team of volunteers and supporters have gone on to play a major part in the lives of the villagers in the Don Keo Commune of Cambodia, whilst always maintaining their philosophy to give a hand up, not a hand out.

In 2012, it became obvious that her personal commitments – she now had a young child to care for – meant Deborah was unable to provide the level of time and commitment needed to continue running Helping Hands so she sought out an organisation with the same philosophy as her and with the capacity and level of commitment to Cambodia to ensure the continuation of her organisation.

In April 2013, Deborah handed over the management of Helping Hands Cambodia to Globalteer, a UK-registered charity. Find out more about Globalteer here.